Its bravery didn't equal its resilience.

I couldn't enter where the light touched, so I descended into the shadowy part of the fishbowl.

I'd crossed the black between the stars carrying nothing but the ashes of my own dead home. My kind had died. Fallen for their own wrath and they’d called it the Collapse. The skies were scorched to save the foundations from infestation. Suicide of the species to save the home, such that a new generation might spring forth, as life had sprung before.

My kind had fouled its own paradise. Like the fishbowl below, it'd been a beautiful world. It wasn't even the machines that undid us. It was our grand ideas about how the world ought to work. And when reality held its firm ground, my kind once more employed their magnificent brains to project a fresh notion upon it. Reality, in its fury, answered with scorched skies. There'd been scientists who advised the rulers of my planet not to do certain things, yet somebody always has to die first.

In my case an entire civilisation had to die first. Then there was nothing left for me. So I went searching, to mix and mingle across lifeforms in the sky and make a better offspring for myself.

I was after all the last. A liquid shadow and starving memory, sent to taste another world before I decided whether to summon what remained of my species or let us fade into the void.

I began with the small ones. They were everywhere. A gray-furred scuttler darted along the base of a brick wall, its facial tendrils twitching at the scent of discarded food. I dropped into it like ink into water. Its body jerked once, then accepted me. The world narrowed to a rush of concrete and rumble. I felt its tiny heart hammering against my borrowed ribs. Smells I knew to be food and rot confused me. The sharp tang of urine from a hundred others almost made me flee back into the safety of the dark stars. Its memories were simple: run, eat, hide, breed. No grand ideas. No rulers with magnificent brains. Just survival. I liked that for a moment. But the stench wasn't bearable. Then the scuttler paused and I smelt the chemical burn of the city air in its lungs. Ash and combustion, nanofiber particulates from all kinds of sources filtered through every orifice of the scuttler. This zoo might have been worse than mine was at its lowest. I withdrew before the scuttler could even squeak.

Next came a larger beast rooting through an alley. A bigger host, I thought, would increase my range. I slid into its mangy coat and the world opened wider. Wet pavement under cushioned stumps. A dominant biped's voice calling from a raised shelter above. It was meaningless to me, but the beast lifted its head and I tasted the city through its nose. Again I wanted to withdraw when the faint copper of blood pierced through the fumes. I liked that taste though.

The beast’s thoughts were hunger and loyalty and the dim memory of a warm appendage that once scratched behind its ears. Pathetic. I flexed inside it and the beast whined. I saw the upright walkers passing on the walkway, their foot-coverings expensive and useless, their faces lit by glowing rectangles they stared into like worshippers.

Augmented reality overlays flickered in their eyes—ads for mood stabilizers, crypto wallets blinking transaction alerts, social scores ticking downward. One upright walker in formal coverings glanced at the metal band on its wrist. The beast wanted to follow it for scraps. I didn't. I aborted the host and left the beast shaking in the gutter. I moved upward.

The next one was an upright walker on the outer ledge three levels down. It was big and leaned on the barrier with a burning stick between its digits, staring empty at the skyline as if it owed it something. I entered through the skin of its wrist when it flicked ash into the dark. Its blood welcomed me with a sluggish warmth. Its heart rate climbed. It thought it was the burning stick. I tasted its morning fuel in the back of its throat: charred grain and cheap stimulant liquid. It scratched its midsection and I felt the loose skin, the way it jiggled. Disgusting.

These walkers carried their failures on the outside. My kind had burned ours away. I pushed deeper, sampling the dull throb of its desire when it thought of another walker two levels above. A label floated up from its thoughts, meaningless syllables. A flicker of something hot and shameful. I considered staying. The pull was there. Then its communication device buzzed with a work signal and the irritation spiked like acid. This world rewarded such things. I pulled out before it could finish the burning stick.

I tried one more. The other walker above. It sat on its outer ledge exactly as the night had promised, wind teasing its head tendrils. I entered it the way I'd planned at first, smooth and complete, tendrils threading vein and nerve. Its warmth hit me hard. Chaotic like a quake. Its pulse slammed against mine. Then I found the foreign intrusions and stopped to observe the unnatural bulges that filled its chest cavity—silicone sacs, heavy and lifeless. The tissue around them strained, rejecting the fakes. Its mouthparts felt wrong. Swollen ridges under the skin, synthetic fillers pumped into its face tendrils. Not battle scars or natural mutation, but deliberate alteration. The flesh resisted my touch. I tasted the chemical tang of recent injections through its jaw.

I saw its life in bright bursts: crowded transit pods, bitter stimulant liquid from a disposable container, the ache of isolation in a city of millions, algorithms suggesting microdoses for its "connection deficit." It gasped. Its lower limbs pressed together. I tasted a strange thing on its tongue like metal. For a second I almost liked the way it fought me. Its bravery didn't equal its resilience, though it was the kind of host that might birth something stronger.

But then the rest came.

The smell of its cleansing chemicals mixed with the waste hauler rumbling below. Its memories of shelter and pictures of places it'd never visit. The endless wanting. The plastic in its blood. The way it smiled at its reflection in the transparent panel while counting the lines under its eyes, its AR makeup filter struggling to hide the fatigue. This wasn't survival. This was a slow rot dressed up as life. A zoo where the walkers paid shelter fees and called it freedom. My home had died cleaner than this.

I withdrew from all of them at once.

The scuttler froze. The beast whimpered and ran. The upright walker dropped its burning stick and clutched its wrist. The other walker staggered against the barrier, breath clouding white in the sudden cold I'd left behind.

I rose from the rooftops, liquid shadow given shape once more, tall and unhurried. The city lights blurred beneath me. I'd tasted the species. I'd worn its flesh and breathed its poisoned air. It wasn't enough. It'd never be enough. This world was a cesspool wearing pretty lights. I couldn't settle here. I couldn't summon what remained of my kind to this filth. Better to let us fade than to rot slowly among their mirrors and glass.

I turned to the black between the stars and chose the next faint blue dot on the horizon. Another fishbowl. Maybe a cleaner one. Maybe not.

The invasion had been aborted.

I moved on.